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Morning Five: 02.01.13 Edition

If people were upset by the NCAA using a federal bankruptcy proceeding to obtain information for their own investigation into Miami they may be surprised to learn that at least one (anonymous) NCAA investigator claims that the NCAA did nothing wrong. In addition, the anonymous individual also questioned NCAA President Mark Emmert’s assertion that he was unaware of the practices that were used in the Miami investigation. At this point we are not sure where this case is heading, but continue to assert that the NCAA would definitely benefit from some more transparency. As for the case itself, the close of the article sums it up best: “The only certainty? This mess keeps getting messier.”

When we brought you the financial information about Tennessee a few days ago we assumed that the atrocious situation there was somewhat unique. It turns out that the Volunteers are not alone as a new report questions the financial viability of Louisville‘s YUM! Center. The author of the study (found here in PDF format or you can check out their entire website) say that the root of the problem was unrealistic expectation for bond sales used to finance the arena and was compounded by a very friendly agreement with Louisville. According to the author of the study the YUM! Center costs $92,000 to operate per day and will end up costing taxpayers $839 million over the next 40 years. We are assuming this is not the last that we have heard of this issue.

It appears that the James Southerland saga will not be resolved for another week as Syracuse has set Southerland’s appeal to regain his eligibility for next week. The date and time of the appeal has not been announced, but Southerland will miss Saturday’s game against Pittsburgh and Monday’s game against Notre Dame. Interestingly Southerland’s appeal will be heard by a panel from Syracuse not the NCAA. We are not privy to all the details of Southerland’s suspension, but based on the information that has been released it appears to resolve around a tutor helping him write some or all of a paper. We also are not clear how this decision will factor into any potential investigation by the NCAA, but the decision next week will hopefully add some clarity to this.

On Saturday the epicenter of college basketball will be in Bloomington, Indiana and in the lead up to that Dana O’Neil provides us with an excellent piece on the importance of basketball on life in Indiana. While most fans are somewhat familiar with the impact of basketball in the state, few have experienced and O’Neil provides a great insight into how it permeates life there. Everybody knows about Indiana, Butler, and Hoosiers (the movie not the team), but as O’Neil notes there is so much more to Indiana’s love affair with basketball than just what you see on television.

If you thought that Kentucky fans were pumped to take on Marshall Henderson just wait until Saturday when they go to Texas A&M and will have a very special spectator–Billy Gillispie. The decision by Gillispie to come to the game after being invited by Billy Kennedy is an interesting one since Gillispie left Kentucky literally running out the door. I guess that Gillispie assumes that he built enough goodwill in College Station during his three seasons there that it was a good place to make a public appearance. Still we don’t understand the need to make Gillispie a spectacle against his former team. Normally we would assume that the home crowd would cheer Gillispie loudly enough to drown out the opposing crowd, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Big Blue Nation make a trip down to Texas just to jeer Gillispie one more time.